HEROES OF GETTYSBURG
Heroes are not made of different stuff from ordinary men. God made us
all heroes at heart. Satan lied when he said "all that a man hath will
he give for his life." The call comes and commonplace men and workaday
women give their lives as a very little thing for a cause, for an
ideal, or for others. When the great moment comes, the love and courage
and unselfishness that lie deep in the souls of all of us can flash
forth into beacon-lights of brave deeds which will stand throughout the
years pointing the path of high endeavor for those who come after.
Women the world over will never forget how Mrs. Strauss came back from
the life-boat and went down on the _Titanic_ with her husband rather
than have him die alone.
Boys have been braver and tenderer their lives long because of the
unknown hero at Niagara. With his mother he was trapped on a floe when
the ice-jam broke. Slowly and sternly it moved toward the roaring edge
of the cataract. From the Suspension Bridge a rope was let down to
them. Twice he tried to fix it around his mother, but she was too old
and weak to hold on. The floe was passing beyond the bridge and there
was just time for him to knot the rope around himself. Young, active
and strong, he would be safe in a moment, but his mother would go to
death deserted and alone. He tossed the rope away, put his arm around
his old mother and they went over the Falls together.
Every American sailor has been braver and gentler from the memory of
Captain Craven who commanded the monitor _Tecumseh_ when Fighting
Farragut destroyed the forts and captured the Rebel fleet at Mobile
Bay. The _Tennessee_ was about to grapple with the _Tennessee_, the
great Rebel ram, when she struck a torpedo, turned over and went down
bow foremost. Captain Craven was in the pilot-house with the pilot. As
the vessel sank they both rushed for the narrow door. Craven reached it
first, but stood aside saying, "After you, pilot." The latter leaped
through as the water rushed in and was saved. Craven went down with his
ship.
The great moments which are given to men in which to decide whether
they are to be heroes or cowards may come at any time, but they always
flash through every battle. Danger, suffering and death are the stern
tests by which men's real selves are discovered. A man can't do much
pretending when he is under fire, and he can't make believe he is brave
or unselfish, or chivalric when he is sick, or wounded, or dying. We
can be proud that the man who went before us made good and that we can
remember all the great battles of the greatest of our wars by the brave
deeds of brave men.
The battle of Gettysburg was the most important of the Civil War. Lee
with seventy thousand men was pouring into the North. If he defeated
Meade and the Union Army, Washington, the capital, would fall. Even
Philadelphia and New York would be threatened. In three days of
terrible fighting, thirty thousand men were killed. In one of the
charges one regiment, the 1st Minnesota, lost eighty-two per cent. of
its men--more than twice as many as the famous Light Brigade lost at
Balaclava. Pickett's charge of fifteen thousand men over nearly a mile
and a half against the hill which marked the center of the Union lines
was one of the greatest charges in history. When the Confederates were
driven back, two-thirds of the charging party had been killed or
wounded. It was the crisis of the war. If that charge went home
Gettysburg was lost, the Union Army would become a rabble and the whole
strength of the Confederate forces would pass on into the North. On the
Union batteries depended the whole fate of the army. If they could keep
up a fire to the last moment, the charge must fail. Otherwise the
picked thousands of the Confederate Army would break the center of the
Union forces and the battle would be lost. Lee gathered together one
hundred and fifteen guns and directed a storm of shot and shell against
the Union batteries as his regiments charged up the hill. On the very
crest was a battery commanded by young Cushing, a brother of Lieutenant
W. B. Cushing, who drove a tiny torpedo launch over a boom of logs
under the fire of forts, troops and iron-clads and destroyed the great
Confederate iron-clad _Albemarle_. This Cushing was of the same
fighting breed. During the battle he was shot through both thighs but
would not leave his post though suffering agonies from the wounds. When
the charge began he fought his battery as fast as the guns could be
loaded and fired and his grape-shot and canister mowed down the
charging Confederates by the hundred. In spite of tremendous losses the
Rebels rushed up the hill firing as they came and so fierce was their
fire and that of the Confederate batteries that of the Union officers
in command of the batteries just in front of the charge, all but two
were struck. But the men kept up the fire to the very last. As what was
left of the Confederates topped the hill, a shell struck the wounded
Cushing tearing him almost in two. He held together his mangled body
with one hand and with the other fired his last gun and fell dead just
as the Confederates reached the stone wall on the crest. They were so
shattered by his fire that they were unable to hold the hill and were
driven back and the battle won for the Union.
Old John Burns was another one of the many heroes of Gettysburg. John
was over seventy years old when the battle was fought and lived in a
little house in the town of Gettysburg with his wife who was nearly as
old as he. Burns had fought in the war of 1812 and began to get more
and more uneasy every day as the battle was joined at different points
near where he was living. The night before the last day of the battle
the old man went out to get his cow and found that a foraging band of
Confederates had driven her off. This was the last straw. The next day
regiment after regiment of the Confederate forces marched past his
house and the old man took down his flintlock musket which had done
good service against the British in 1812 and began to melt lead and run
bullets through his little old bullet mould. Mrs. Burns had been
watching him uneasily for some time.
"John, what in the world are you doing there?" she finally asked.
"Oh," he said, "I thought I would fix up the old gun and get some
bullets ready in case any of the boys might want to use it. There's
goin' to be some fightin' and it's just as well to get ready. There
ain't a piece in the army that will shoot straighter than Betsy here,"
and the old man patted the long stock of the musket affectionately.
"Well," said his wife, "you see that you keep out of it. You know if
the Rebs catch you fightin' in citizens' clothes, they'll hang you
sure."
"Don't you worry about me," said John. "I helped to lick the British
and I ain't afraid of a lot of Rebels."
Finally the long procession of Confederate forces passed and for an
hour or so the road was empty and silent. At last in the distance
sounded the roll and rattle of drums and through a great cloud of dust
flamed the stars and stripes and in a moment the road was filled with
solid masses of blue-clad troops hurrying to their positions on what
was to be one of the great battle-fields of the world. As regiment
after regiment filed past, old John could stand it no longer. He
grabbed his musket and started out the door.
"John! John! Where are you going?" screamed his wife, running after
him. "Ain't you old enough to know better?"
"I'm just goin' out to get a little fresh air," said John, pulling away
from her and hurrying down the street. "I'll be back before night
sure."
It was the afternoon of the last day when the men of a Wisconsin
regiment near the front saw a little old man approaching, dressed in a
blue swallow-tail coat with brass buttons and carrying a long flintlock
rifle with a big powder-horn strapped about him.
"Hi, there!" he piped, when he saw the men. "I want to jine in.
Where'll I go?"
The men laughed at the sight.
"Anywhere," shouted back one of them; "there's good fightin' all along
the line."
"Well," said John, "I guess I'll stop here," and in spite of their
attempts to keep him back, he crept up until he was at the very front
of the skirmish line. There was a lull in the fighting just then and
there was a good deal of joking up and down the line between the men
and John.
"Say, grandpa," called out one, "did you fight in the Revolution?"
"Have you ever hit anything with that old gun of yours?" said another.
But John was able to hold his own.
"Sure I fought in the Revolution," he piped loudly, "and as for hittin'
anything, say, boys, do you know that at the Battle of Bunker Hill I
had sixty-two bullets in my pocket. I had been loadin' and firin' fifty
times and I had shot forty-nine British officers when suddenly I heard
some one yellin' to me from behind our lines and he says to me, 'Hi,
there, old dead-shot, don't you know that this is a battle and not a
massacre?' I turns around and right behind me was General George
Washington, so I saluted and I says, 'What is it, General?' and he
says, 'You stop firin' right away.' 'Well,' I said, 'General, I have
only got twelve more bullets; can't I shoot those?' 'No,' he says to
me, 'you go home. You've done enough,' and he says, 'don't call me
General, call me George.'"
This truthful anecdote was repeated along the whole line and instantly
made John's reputation as a raconteur. He was allowed to establish
himself at the front of the line and in a minute, as the firing
commenced, he was fighting with the best of them. They tried to
persuade him to take a musket from one of the many dead men who were
lying around, but like David, John would not use any weapon which he
had not proved. He stuck to old Betsy and although he did not make
quite so good a record as at the Battle of Bunker Hill, according to
his comrades he accounted for no less than three Confederates, one of
whom was an officer. Before the day was over he received three wounds.
Toward evening there was an overwhelming rush of the Confederates which
drove back the Union soldiers and the Wisconsin regiment fell back
leaving poor old John lying there among the other wounded. He was in a
dilemma. Although his cuts were only flesh-wounds, yet he would bleed
to death unless they were properly dressed. On the other hand if he was
found by the Rebels in civilian clothes with his rifle, he would
undoubtedly be shot according to military law. The old man could not,
however, bear the thought of parting with old Betsy, so he crawled
groaningly toward a hollow tree where he managed to hide the old
flint-lock and the powder-horn and soon afterward attracted the
attention of the Confederate patrol which was going about the field
attending to the wounded. At first they were suspicious of him.
"What are you doing, old man, wounded on a battle-field in citizens'
clothes?" one of the officers asked.
"Well," said John, "I was out lookin' for a cow which some of you
fellows carried off and first thing I knew I was hit in three places.
So long as you got my cow, the least you can do is to carry me home."
[Illustration: The Battle of Gettysburg]
This seemed fair to the officer and a stretcher was brought and the old
man was carried back to the house. His next fear was that his wife
would unconsciously betray him to the patrol that were bringing him
into the house. Sure enough as they reached the door, old Mrs. Burns
came rushing out.
"John," she screamed, "I told you not to go out."
"Shut up, Molly," bellowed John at the top of his voice. "I didn't find
the old cow, but I did the best I could and I want you to tell these
gentlemen that I am as peaceable an old chap that ever lived, for they
found me out there wounded with a lot of soldiers and think I may have
been doin' some fightin'."
Mrs. Burns was no fool.
"Gentlemen," she cried out, "I can't thank you enough for bringing back
this poor silly husband of mine. I told him that if he went hunting
to-day for cows or anything else, he would most likely find nothing but
trouble, and I guess he has. He's old enough to know better, but you
leave him here and I'll nurse him and try to get some sense into his
head."
So the patrol left Burns at his own house, not without some suspicions,
for the next day an officer came around and put him through a severe
cross-examination which John for the most part escaped by pretending to
be too weak to answer any particularly searching question. Mrs. Burns
nursed the old man back to health again and never let a day go by
without a number of impressive remarks about his foolhardiness. The old
man hadn't much to say, but the first day after he got well he
disappeared and came back an hour or so later with old Betsy and the
powder-horn which he found safe and sound in the tree where he left
them. These he hung again over the mantelpiece in readiness for the
next war, "for," said John, "a man's never too old to fight for his
country."
Another hero in that battle was Lieutenant Bayard Wilkeson. Only
nineteen years old he commanded a battery in an exposed position on the
Union right. His two guns did so much damage that Gordon, the
Confederate general, could not advance his troops in the face of their
deadly fire. Wilkeson could be seen on the far-away hilltop riding back
and forth encouraging and directing his gunners.
General Gordon sent for the captains of two of his largest batteries.
"Train every gun you've got," he said, "on that man and horse. He's
doing more damage than a whole Yankee regiment."
Quietly the guns of the two far-apart positions were swung around until
they all pointed directly at that horseman against the sky. A white
handkerchief was waved from the farthest battery and with a crash every
gun went off. When the smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, the
guns dismounted and the gunners killed. The Confederate forces swept on
their way unchecked across the field that had been swept and winnowed
by Wilkeson's deadly guns. As they went over the crest, they found him
under his dead horse and surrounded by his dead gunners still alive but
desperately wounded. He was carried in to the Allen House along with
their own wounded and given what attention was possible, which was
little enough. It was plain to be seen that he was dying. Suffering
from that choking, desperate thirst which attacks every wounded man who
has lost much blood he faintly asked for water. There was no water to
be had, but finally one of the Confederate officers in charge managed
to get a full canteen off a passing soldier. Wilkeson stretched out his
hands for what meant more to him than anything else in the world. Just
then a wounded Confederate soldier next to him cried out, "For God's
sake give me some."
Wilkeson stopped with the canteen half to his mouth and then by sheer
force of will passed it over to the other. In his agonizing thirst the
wounded Confederate drank every drop before he could stop himself.
Horror-stricken he turned to apologize. The young lieutenant smiled at
him, turned slightly--and was gone. It took more courage to give up
that flask of cold water than to fight his battery against the whole
Confederate Army.
The hero-folk on that great day were not all men and boys. Among the
many, many monuments that crowd the field of Gettysburg there is one of
a young girl carved from pure translucent Italian marble. It is the
statue of Jennie Wade, the water-carrier for many a wounded and dying
soldier during two of those days of doom. Although she knew it not,
Jennie was following in the footsteps of another woman, that unknown
wife of a British soldier at the Battle of Saratoga in the far-away
Revolutionary days. When Burgoyne's army was surrounded at Saratoga,
some of the women and wounded men were sent for safety to a large house
in the neighborhood where they took refuge in the cellar. There they
crouched for six long days and nights while the cannon-balls crashed
through the house overhead. The cellar became crowded with wounded and
dying men who were suffering agonies from thirst. It was only a few
steps to the river, but the house was surrounded by Morgan's
sharp-shooters and every man who ventured out with a bucket was shot
dead. At last the wife of one of the soldiers offered to go and in
spite of the protests of the men ventured out. The American riflemen
would not fire upon a woman and again and again she went down to the
river and brought back water to the wounded in safety.
Jennie Wade was a girl of twenty who lived in a red-brick house right
in the path of the battle. They could not move to a safer place, for
her married sister was there with a day-old baby, so the imprisoned
family was in the thick of the battle. Recently when the old roof was
taken off to be repaired, over two quarts of bullets were taken from
it. During the first day, Jennie's mother moved her daughter and her
baby so that her head rested against the foot of the bed. She had no
more been moved than a bullet crashed through the window and struck the
pillow where her head had lain an instant before. While her mother
watched her daughter and the baby, Jennie carried water to the soldiers
on the firing-line. At the end of the first day fifteen soldiers lay
dead in the little front yard and all through that weary day and late
into the night Jennie was going back and forth filling the canteens of
the wounded and dying soldiers as they lay scattered on that stricken
field. Throughout the second day she kept on with this work and many
and many a wounded soldier choking with thirst lived to bless her
memory. On this day a long procession of blue-clad men knocked at the
door of the house asking for bread until the whole supply was gone.
After dark on the second day, Jennie mixed up a pan of dough and set it
out to rise. She got up at daybreak and as she was lighting a fire, a
hungry soldier-boy knocked at the door and asked for something to eat.
Jennie started to mix up some biscuit and as she stood with her sleeves
rolled up and her hands in the dough, a minie ball cut through the door
and she fell over dead without a word. Her statue stands as she must
have appeared during those first two days of battle. In one hand she
carries a pitcher and over her left arm are two army-canteens hung by
their straps. Not the least of the heroic ones of that battle was
Jennie Wade who died while thus engaged in homely, helpful services for
her country.
These are the stories of but a few who fought at Gettysburg that men
might be free and that their country might stand for righteousness. The
spirit of that battle has been best expressed in a great poem by Will
H. Thompson with which we end these stories of some of the brave deeds
of the greatest battle of the Civil War.
HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG
A cloud possessed the hollow field,
The gathering battle's smoky shield;
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed,
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed,
And from the heights the thunder pealed.
Then, at the brief command of Lee,
Moved out that matchless infantry,
With Pickett leading grandly down
To rush against the roaring crown
Of those dread heights of destiny.
Far heard above the angry guns,
A cry across the tumult runs,
The voice that rang through Shiloh's woods
And Chickamauga's solitudes,
The fierce South cheering on her sons.
Ah, how the withering tempest blew
Against the front of Pettigrew!
A khamsin wind that scorched and singed,
Like that infernal flame that fringed
The British squares at Waterloo!
"Once more in Glory's van with me!"
Virginia cries to Tennessee,
"We two together, come what may,
Shall stand upon those works to-day."
(The reddest day in history.)
But who shall break the guards that wait
Before the awful face of Fate?
The tattered standards of the South
Were shriveled at the cannon's mouth,
And all her hopes were desolate.
In vain the Tennesseean set
His breast against the bayonet;
In vain Virginia charged and raged,
A tigress in her wrath uncaged,
Till all the hill was red and wet!
Above the bayonets mixed and crossed,
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost
Receding through the battle-cloud,
And heard across the tempest loud
The death-cry of a nation lost!
The brave went down! Without disgrace
They leaped to Ruin's red embrace;
They only heard Fame's thunder wake,
And saw the dazzling sun-burst break
In smiles on Glory's bloody face!
They fell, who lifted up a hand
And bade the sun in heaven to stand!
They smote and fell, who set the bars
Against the progress of the stars,
And stayed the march of Motherland.
They stood, who saw the future come
On through the fight's delirium!
They smote and stood, who held the hope
Of nations on that slippery slope
Amid the cheers of Christendom!
God lives! He forged the iron will
That clutched and held that trembling hill.
God lives and reigns! He built and lent
Those heights for Freedom's battlement,
Where floats her flag in triumph still!
Fold up the banners! Smelt the guns!
Love rules; her gentler purpose runs.
A mighty mother turns in tears
The pages of her battle years,
Lamenting all her fallen sons!